What Sinners Love (Sinners of Hawthorne University 3)

1

Vivid blue eyes meet mine. I know them, and they’re unpleasantly familiar—because I’ve seen them too many times. First, in his son, and now in him.

Alan Montgomery.

I strain up against the ropes around my body as I stare up at him, trying to wrench myself out of the binds that pin me to the chair. I’m still a little dazed, my body exhausted from the fight with Reagan and my throat sore from where she wrapped her hands around it. She must’ve drugged me or something after she choked me out, or she couldn’t have kept me unconscious long enough to bring me here.

To Alan.

His calm smile sends a chill down my spine. “It’s been a long time, Sabrina.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? My name is Sophie.” My lip curls, and I spit the words out, my voice hoarse. Alan raises an amused eyebrow, like he’s in on some joke that I’m not. “My name isn’t—”

Sabrina.

My voice dies before I can utter the word, and it feels like my heart stops as those three syllables bounce around in my head.

Sabrina.

No. No, that’s not my fucking name.

My name is Sophie Wright. That’s what everyone has called me for as long as I can remember.

Except… there’s a gap in my memory. More than a gap, there’s a huge fucking hole in my memory. Almost everything that happened to me before the age of eleven is a foggy blur.

I used to say I wanted those memories back—I used to hate that there were years and years of darkness in my life, a void where a childhood should have been.

But I realize now that I was kidding myself all this time. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to know all the shit my mind kept buried for so long. I don’t want to relive it.

It’s too fucking late, though.

Alan’s simple statement hits me with the force of a damn wrecking ball, knocking down the walls that some unconscious part of me built around my mind. And without those walls to keep them out, memories flash by in a torrent.

I should’ve known that deep down, they were still there. I knew it because of the scars on my skin and on my heart. Those old wounds were too deep, too real, to ever forget. Some self-preservation instinct in me fought to bury those memories for years, keep them down. I fought against the dizzy spells and the moments of weakness. I fought against myself.

Sabrina.

It is my name—or it was.

It used to be. When I was a little girl trapped down here.

“What the fuck?” I whisper, my teeth clenching. Alan’s face seems to waver in front of me, and I worry for a second that I’m about to pass out. As if even now, my mind is trying to protect itself from the memories bubbling up.

I was kept here when I was younger, in this bunker. Fuzzy images and remembered feelings course through my body, making me feel like there’s an electric current running through my veins.

I was here.

When I was only a little girl, I sat in this exact same room. In this exact same spot. Tied up to a chair or thrown down onto the cold cement beneath my feet. I remember clawing at the walls, desperate to escape, to get away from Alan, the monster. I remember being afraid.

I wasn’t alone though. There was someone else with me, another little girl.

My gaze darts over to Reagan. She still stands nearby, shooting glances over at Alan Montgomery. I blink, wishing I could scrub at my eyes with the heels of my hands, as if I need to clear them to really see her. To figure out if I’m right. Was she the girl I remember being trapped down here with me?

Why was she here? Why was I here?

I don’t remember enough to answer that question. Everything is still a jumbled mess in my head, filtered through the thoughts and perceptions of a child. I’m not sure I would understand what the fuck is going on even if I could remember everything clearly, but it hardly matters. The more I try to get a handle on my situation, the harder my heart pounds in my chest.

Panic starts to creep in. Cold and deadly, it kicks in like a bitch. I struggle and squirm against the ropes, but they only seem to hold me tighter. They feel like snakes crawling over my skin as old fears and new ones collide inside my mind, mixing in a toxic combination.

I have to get out of here.

I have to escape.

The voice inside me is a cry for help—a cry from my younger self, the little girl that was destroyed in this bunker. The little girl who had her life taken away in this bunker.

Stolen. Abused. Betrayed.

I need to… I need to…

Blackness prickles at the corners of my vision, and my hands go numb. The chair tilts wildly on its legs, nearly toppling over, but I keep thrashing, only one thought able to penetrate my overloaded mind.

I need to escape.

A flash of hot pain cuts across my cheek, and I suck in a lungful of air, my vision clearing as the shock breaks me out of my building panic attack. When I blink and look up, I see Reagan standing over me with her hand raised, something animalistic burning in her eyes.

“Stop str

uggling, bitch.”

My lungs burn as I suck in the air, but the dull pain that radiates from my cheek where Reagan hit me gives me something to focus on besides fear.

Get it together, Sophie. You’re a fucking fighter. You can fight this too.

Just breathe.

Focus.

And figure out a way to get out of here.

Calling myself by the name I know, the one that’s familiar, helps calm the panic inside me even more. My name may have once been Sabrina, but it’s Sophie now, goddammit.

And Sophie Wright doesn’t roll over for anyone.